“No. I will walk you around,” I changed my course hearing her bull-headedness.
“Okay. Thanks big brother. Shall I pack a basket of goodies in case we see any wolves?”
I wanted to wipe that condescending smile right off her face. With my mouth. I wanted to kiss her so bad now, it hurt. I closed my eyes and drew in a breath.
And I didn’t like the brother reference. It had a tainted feeling.
“The wolves are unforgiving and ask questions after. I can’t let my guard down.”
“Alright, honey. I’ll take the shotgun. You take the machine gun. We’ll mow ‘em down if they come near us.”
Her wittiness never failed to make my smile on the inside, but rarely did someone make me smile outwardly.
“You think I’m funny, you should see me when I'm really heated up,” she smarted off again.
Oh, that I’d like to see though I worry my self-control would be lost at the sight. It was already on a thin thread of existence. I hadn’t slept last night for fear she’d wake up and see how she’d rolled into my chest for the third night. And I was too selfish to leave either.
“Let’s go.”
“That’s all you ever say when you don’t say what you really want to say. I wonder what’s rolling around in that head of yours.” Her pretty eyes batted innocently at me.
No she doesn’t want to know what goes on in my head. She’d wig out and run screaming.
“Fortunately, I have that still to myself, unlike your keen ability to see what my motives are for avoiding the subject sometimes. You read me too well. I may just have to change to keep you guessing,” I smiled wide and enjoyed her swimmy eyes. Her eyes got all dreamy like for a second before clearing and I didn’t know what it meant. I know what I thought!
I was too enthralled with the idea that she might actually like me flirting with her so I decided I would stop being a butthead and focus a little more positive attention in her direction. See what it got me.
The walk was going great. We exchanged light humor and she laughed more than I’d seen since meeting her officially.
“What does Joshlin really want me for?”
Uh, oh! Bad topic. Off the humor track. “More than just a wife. He wants you for your ability to make other certain groups obey him without any negotiations to be made.” Mainly Caydon, her other suitor. Joshlin didn’t want Caydon to win. And recently, neither do I. But Joshlin wouldn’t get her either.
“Why are they not now? Obeying that is," she asked.
Skating around this was difficult. “To have you means he holds their oath to you. Without you he is forced to meet their demands before they will comply with his own.”
“And to do this I have to marry him and make babies with him?”
Blunt, but to the point. It just made me angrier to picture the idea. “Yes.” I answered her, but it came out pointed and emotionally tied to the feelings I had for her. I followed behind her enjoying the view and tightening my mouth up to the point of pain.
“Well, I don’t want to. I don’t want any part of running a group of people either. Besides, from what you say and what I saw, I will be locked away and used like a machine more than a person or a wife.”
That was exactly the plan Joshlin had for her. Frankly, she is too observant to be comfortable around. How much had she deciphered of me?
“That won’t happen.”
She wheeled around stopping me in my step as it landed us both in some kind of half dance move, half walking pattern. Our feet were tethered together and our bodies were way too close.
“How do you know, Ames Cahn?”
EMMA
He knows something else I don’t. That’s it. I’m determined to get one secret at a time out of him no matter what it takes. And I know just what to do.
I inched closer to him, if that’s possible.
I saw the way his lips drew in and his eyes grew distant like he’s losing his thought processing. I know the feeling around him and wondered if he was telling the truth when he said he could feel the same things I did.
“I want to know why you are so sure he won’t get me?”
His eyes narrowed briefly, but I wasn’t sure what emotion flashed across them—anger or desire. It was getting hard to tell the difference.
“Because you’re mine.” His lips brush the skin beside my mouth labeled my cheek so lightly I am wondering if it happened. When I opened my eyes, he was walking ahead of me and the heat was gone from where his body was so close. Now I am totally trying to decide if I imagined the whole scene.
We walked for another twenty minutes or so while I ignored the way my lips tingled from the “made up” memory. He didn’t acknowledge it if it did happen. If anything, he looks positively peeved off.
Maybe he is mad that he likes me. Maybe he thinks I am a hindrance. That’s it. It has to be.
Before I think of the consequences of my statement, I shouted out to his back, “If I’m such a burden, then why don’t you just let me go.”
This time he wheeled around on me like I did him, but not anywhere as close. “I am not leaving you.”
Threat or promise? “As my jailer who took me to him in the first place, I have to assume you have some type of agenda. You all do.”
A vein in his forehead grew letting me know he’d reached his limit. As sure as I was that I’d forced him to reach that limit, he turned sideways and slammed a fist into the hard Oak tree beside him. The ground shook, the tree rattled. So, he had some power.
After his anger was absorbed into the tree and leaving him enough to face me, he said in a very low, deep tone, “Emma. I am only here to keep you from a dangerous fate and will do anything in my power to keep you from living it. I’m sorry you think so badly of me, but I didn’t lead you to him with the intention of leaving you there, but to see if he still regarded the same intentions. If I could have avoided this whole situation, I would have.”
I was right. He didn’t want to be here. “Then I don’t want to be here either.”
Without thought to the consequences again, I took off in a run. Where to, I didn’t know. I should have known from the way the tree shook beside me that was a mistake.
The ground was noiseless and the woods were telling me less secrets than Ames was. I turned to see that he wasn’t anywhere in sight. Fearing I was finally alone with nowhere to go, I sat down and cried like the girl I am. It had been a long time coming. I’d wanted to belt out the sobs for days, but not in front of him.
A warm hand landed on my shoulder making me shoot up to a standing position and nailing the culprit in his or her family jewels and then some. My stepfather used to say when he taught me to defend myself, a bony knee to the groin with the force I used could render a man sterile. He was worried I’d have to fight off boys in the high school, not magical beings in the woods of Tennessee.
Ames doubled over making a whimpering sound and in my opinion exaggerating the point.
“Oh, please. You shouldn’t be sneaking up on me. I didn’t know if you were the good guys.”
His voice squeaked, “I would wonder about the knowing part with how much you hate me, but I’m in too much pain to think.”
I laughed a little, but concentrated on the words he used. “I don’t hate you.” Just the opposite.
“Good to know for next time. I’ll protect the goods when you’re near to be sure I can still be a man in this lifetime.”
For some reason, my face flushed at the picture his answer sent to my brain. It was doing that a lot lately.
I stuck my hand out to hide where my mind had gone.
He looked down at it and said, “I’m not sure that might not be a secret weapon of choice too. I might fare better on my own.”
Now he was teasing me. Lightening the mood, I went with it. “Either way, now you know I’m not the daintiest damsel in distress. Next time, let me know you’re going to touch me first.”
Oh gawd. Did I just say that? My cheeks flushed for the
third time in one conversation. A very weird conversation.
“Noted.”
He didn’t smile, but the disarming dimple rose to signal I’d effectively embarrassed the heck out of myself.
“Will you come back?” he asked carefully.
“I want to know why you’re helping me.”
“I’ve told you. No one deserves what he has planned for you.”
A heavy sigh of heartache later, I gave up and returned with Ames to the cabin.
Trigger and Wicker were fast at work on the army game they were playing when we left. Ames told them to be ready to go to town in thirty minutes.
I was so excited I bounced up and down. “Where are we going?”
He eyed me curiously, “Is there something you want?”
Was he offering? “I have been dying for a frappe.”
He might have held back his smile if he’d known how genuine it looked to me like he was trying to make me happy, but he didn’t. And then he said, “Done.”
He disappeared into the bathroom with a crooked walk left over from my knee jerk reaction.
AMES
I was falling for her. I already knew this, but now I know it without a doubt. I singlehandedly let this girl talk me into giving up that I wanted her, watched her kick me in the nuts without retaliation, and now gave in to her every need without hesitation. I glanced over at the guys as I told her she’d have her coffee catching them both using the remote as a fishing pole to signify that I was being reeled in.
Of course, they were right.
We left thirty five minutes later.
In town, we went to the hardware store first for more items needed for the trap system around the perimeter of the house. My better than average hearing could detect it closing faster than I could piss in a tin can. I was good at both.
The next stop was to wash all the clothes we had worn. I hated mixing her clothes with ours, but she insisted.
At the grocery store, we stocked up on several rather froufrou meal items at her insistence. She wanted pasta, she got pasta. She wanted Earl Grey Tea, she got the Earl Grey Tea. She also wanted yogurt, cheese, and red, cherry, sugar-free Kool-aid.
Verdangit! I was hosed. Trying to change her mind was like trying to stop a tornado. I think that’s one of the things I like about her the most. Unwavering determination. Her self-assuredness wasn’t always there, I’d learned, but it wasn’t absent either.
Of course, the guys threw in doughnuts, potato chips, and two cases of Mountain Dew.
I grabbed a bag of beef jerky at the checkout stand stealing a chance to get my head clear and have something for myself. I was still so caught up in her prancing around the store with her internal list of items needed to make everything dressed up in pretty Italian dinners that I had forgotten to get anything I like.
That’s it. I would just have to stay outside the cabin and take a turn keeping watch. I needed air.
I stilled the steering wheel into Starbucks and ordered her a mocha frappe. I had my wits back enough that I ordered a house blend coffee with just sugar for myself. Trigger wanted the same and Wicker ordered a super girly cappuccino. I eyed him in the mirror as he scowled. He muttered for me to shut up and I gave him the “I didn’t say anything” look.
“I thought you liked tea,” I asked sounding way too much like a dang girl with the word tea. I had to force the word out.
“Depends on the mood of the day I guess.”
Trigger mocked her with the same words, “Depends on the mood of the day.”
“Shut up, Trigger,” I barked louder than I meant to.
“That’s a very female answer for I can change my mind any ole day. Women are all the same,” Trigger grunted.
“Shut up, Trigger,” I tried to stay within a normal tone of voice for her safety, but the guy was grating on my last nerve.
“You two quit it. I am perfectly capable of slamming my girl hand upside both your heads.”
Wicker made his first sound. “Why I stay away from them.”
“Yeah, cuz’ you would make it far without us. A man without a woman is a bull without horns. Ornery and grumpy all the time.”
She was right. I knew this now.
“How did you get so wise?” Wicker asked.
“My stepfather Phillip was A-#-one at it,” she smiled weakly. “When my mom was gone on her business trips for two days a month, he was a bear until she came back. The very next day, he was all smiles.”
“Huh! Something not okay for the kiddies to hear in that read between the lines, boys,” Trigger added with a sly smirk.
Trigger was such a moron.
As the girl handed our drinks through the window in the drive-thru, I caught the glare of the sun shining off something moving at high speed and squealing to a stopping point with both our front bumpers knocking heads. Seconds turned our movements into slow motion as we all exited the car in pursuit but I jumped back in checking on her. I screamed at Emma to get back in the car and roll her window up, but of course she didn’t do anything I ever said to do. Why would she start now?
The driver of the silver Escalade stepped out after us brandishing a familiar long powerful machete intended just for our pleasure. Her door was back open before I could put the Jeep in neutral and jump the piece of crap jerk I knew all too well. I’d killed one like him a month ago. I stood between Emma and him using a hint of magic to stop him but not enough to alert the human race that was fast forming an audience. The car behind us in the driveway started to back away after seeing our dramatic exodus from the cars.
The big, burly one from the passenger seat was also all too familiar to me too. He seemed to show up any time I had altercations of the “keep someone safe” kind. No, it didn’t happen too often, and they were usually human, but this was the princess. Royalty who wasn’t proud or conceited. Not overly compulsive to her own needs. I couldn’t be sure why they were here since I never knew why they chased me in the first place.
If I had to guess, these guys got wind of who I had, which worried me more. Though I haven’t ever known which realm all the goons who follow me around belong to, I’m betting these guys are from her realm. They were here to take her back.
But I always got the vibe that these two weren’t goblin. They had magic and it kept me always wavering on who was and was not part of my race.
A downward blow to the first guys neck put him out fast and the burly dude was bulky enough I just needed too...snap! Not one person saw the small one-inch blade extend into either neck, but left out the ability to kill if aimed in the right area below the ear. I didn’t intend to snap his neck, but his angle had me pressed against the machete. I could feel their magic and it made me scared for Emma. It seemed stronger than most and definitely more than any in my realm. It was odd how some of the goons who followed me sometimes were strong in magic. I tried several times to trace any of our kind to who they might be, but nothing ever came up.
I hated killing, but the machete he held in his limp hands would have found its mark in my gut. To everyone else, the brute appeared knocked out. I pulled them both into the car single-handedly making the masses gasp in loud unison. It didn’t help that my excessive amount of strength pushed the car over by ten inches. Their magic was strong, but not strong enough.
They were relatively easy to put down, but the growing crowd of onlookers would not be. I shimmied over to Emma asking for her help in dousing the crowd into thinking it was just a jealous boyfriend thing and they would be okay. She was fast on her feet and the show was over without too much of a hitch.
I jumped into the Escalade and pulled it into a parking spot across the street, jogged back to the Starbucks, took over the wheel from Emma, and drove us out of there.
Once we were safe and far away, I texted a friend to make the Escalade and its contents disappear. Emma was shaking...a lot. I reached for her to help her calm. Her skin was warm and it made my body light on fire like I’d touched hot coals, but the second afterward
her body just seemed to shift into a downward spiral. Her fast heartbeat slowed to a normal pace. Her closed lids opened and found mine creating so much pain I couldn’t seem to avoid it. She was disgusted by what I’d done.
“Are you okay?” I asked feeling worse for making her watch and knowing it was me who did it. I even think it’s worse than just the act of it because she probably noticed the lithe quick way of taking their lives I’d become accustomed to doing. One lived though. He’d wake up.
She nodded a yes, but she didn’t really mean it. Not here. I’d talk to her alone.
“Guessing now Blue Ridge is not safe either,” Trigger offered taking us both from our locked away staring contest.
“The cabin is safe. The line of Ares can’t enter. I need to know which realm they are from first.” This was more than I should tell, but they needed to know. Trigger needed to make his point or move on. She didn’t need to know everything or she would just continue to worry.
“O.kay! Either you have friends in low places or man’s got some skills I am not aware of.” Wicker piped out this time with his wisdom.
I didn’t give him an answer as I shifted my weight to sit forward again.
“Do I assume that the traps mean that they can enter the land, but not the house?” Emma twanged out still shaking, but trying to hide it. She was still searching for answers and undoubtedly caught the innuendo.
“Yes.”
The haze would only keep humans out though, but no need to worry her more.
EMMA
I could see I would have to drag out answers or at least show that I’m not unintelligent enough to have the wool pulled over my eyes. I thought I'd made that clear. Ames had just killed a man...or something. Killed. He didn’t look upset at killing him, just upset that I was upset.
“And you have a bit more magic than these guys?”
Ames’ hand was braced over the steering like he might rip it out and throw it at me. “I am...able...to take care of myself.”
Denial (Goblin's Kiss Series Book One) Page 16